I was in Brazil to participate in the “International Encounter of Struggling Youth” as a Turkish delegate, which was held in Marica, Rio de Janeiro in June 2016. After the youth encounter, I had the chance to stay a couple of weeks in Brazil to visit some camps and settlements of the Agrarian Reform, some cooperatives and agroecology schools of MST.

Campaigners in Brazil on Wednesday hailed a court decision to cancel a major land acquisition deal because investors had illegally acquired territory from small-scale farmers. A state court in Piaui in Brazil’s poor northeast issued an order canceling the deal for a tract of land larger than Los Angeles earlier this month.

Since the early 1990s, Cambodia has been heavily reliant on foreign aid. The Cambodian Government is seeking to reduce donor-dependence and increase self-reliance, aiming to lift the country to the status of higher middle-income country by 2030. This goal depends heavily on increasing private investment, and the Government has described the private sector as the “engine of economic growth” for Cambodia. It is therefore seeking to encourage both foreign and domestic investment in order to maintain current growth rates and facilitate continued development of the country.

Land speculation stimulates the expansion of plantations across Brazil, increasing land conflicts and displacement of campesino and Indigenous communities. Historically, Indigenous and peasant communities in Brazil have resisted against violence and displacement. Land concentration is a root cause of social and economic inequality, in a country where 1 percent of large landowners control over 90 percent of agricultural land. In the past 12 years, 390 Guarani Kaiowa Indigenous people were assassinated in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where agribusiness corporations and local large landowners have expanded monocropping of commodities.

This report presents results of research into the destruction of forests and natural resources in Rattanakiri and Stung Treng Provinces, Cambodia. Over a number of months the researchers collected evidence and legal documentation, often working under dangerous and life-threatening conditions to record the activities of the luxury timber trade. The report has special relevance in light of recent pronouncements about preventing illegal logging in Cambodia.

The AsociaciNational Assoctaion of Small Farmers of Cuba (ANAP), La Via Campesina International (LVC) and the Komanilel Collective, are pleased to present this virtual video course, "Multimedia Peasant School; an audiovisual tool to scale up agroecology”.